After almost two weeks with the latest iPad, I walked back to the Apple Store in Grand Central, New York and handed it back to the blue-blazoned staff hipster who greeted me at the top of the stairs.
“Was there something wrong with it? And, do you need a replacement? We can get you a replacement, no problem,” signaling to holler over a fellow colleague. But I declined.
“There’s nothing wrong with the tablet,” I said. “I suspect it’s actually a problem with me.”
Within the 14-day period in which Apple consumers are granted a stay of financial relief on their purchases, I returned my tablet not with a heavy heart but nonetheless with a feeling of disappointment in myself. It’s not that I didn’t like the iPad. The build quality was excellent, the software functionality was superb, and there was nothing but the highest of intent for burgeoning productivity potential.
It was that I simply didn’t need one. And not just an iPad, a test case as it turns out, but any tablet for that matter.
Cue the back story.
I fell into the Apple ecosystem. At first, anyway. But I don’t think of myself as an Apple user. I am the kind of person who will use whatever tools that are necessary for the job in hand. It just so happens that I’ve become accustomed to the way these devices work together, just as other same-brand ecosystem devices do.
Almost two years ago I bought a MacBook Air. Still to this day, it has become a crucial, necessary, ultra-portable laptop that has, granted with its occasional failings, has served me well. The battery life is acceptable, so long as certain conditions are met, but in spite of the likely unique gripes rather than hindrances, it’s a fine piece of kit.
But above all else, OS X was the driving force for change. Gone are the days where apps weren’t available. That’s the cloud’s business now. And thanks to the App Store, many previously unavailable apps have migrated to the Mac.
Pleased with the design and the quality, but above all else the OS X operating system that had become so simple to use yet powerful by design, I ripped out the cords on my desktop machine — that whizzed and whirred in the corner of my home office with a subtle yet constant background-fading drone — and I replaced it with a Mac mini.
It was all too easy. I looked for a catch, but there wasn’t one.
A staunch Windows user for my adolescent and early adult life, there should’ve been a level of discomfort and disconcertedness. But there wasn’t. With fond memories of blue screens and translucent windows, I began to prefer a sense of simplicity
The last step was my eventual move to the iPhone, albeit for a second time. The first was not the best of experiences but as a result of my confidence in the Apple ecosystem, I thought it was at least worth another try. And it was worth it.
We can tick off the MacBook Air, the Mac mini — and all the peripherals to really go all-in — and the iPhone. (In between, I’d also bought an Apple TV, but it just makes sense when you’re downloading TV and movies). The next logical step, surely, was to get an iPad.
With glee and excitement, I picked it up from the Grand Central store the following day on my way to work. I configured it, I synchronized my music, my pictures, apps and everything else.
And then I went back to work.
Not on my iPad, but my MacBook Air, which I take with me to work. I took my iPad home and it was sat there on my coffee table for three days until I picked it up again. It wasn’t that I was avoiding it, and I wanted to use it, but I didn’t have any particular reason to use it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the iPad. And, I suspect there is nothing particularly wrong or different with any other tablet. It simply doesn’t fit into my lifestyle.
My iPhone is my primary email communication device, plus my music. That sticks me firmly in the “prosumer” category. But because of my job, I require a keyboard. Granted, typing on the iPad is not the most difficult thing to do in the world, but it’s less natural than a keyboard. I’m automatically drawn to a keyboard.
That said, it’s a fine device but I have, as part of my one-brand ecosystem, other devices that at least for me are better suited for purpose.
Even for “play” and non-work reasons, there was nothing drawing me to it that I couldn’t already do on my ultra-portable iPhone, my keyboard-enabled yet still light and portable MacBook Air, or my work-personal life separating Mac mini that allows me to walk away from it at any point.
If I were a financier, a marketer, or an artist, a tablet may be perfect. But not for me. And you know what? That’s OK. It’s my problem, and not the fault of the tablet.
Marilyn Armstrong‘s insight:
I find myself increasingly confused. I want something small and light that will do the basic stuff I need to do when I don’t want to haul the big heavy laptop. Usually, that is a trip on which I will not need Photoshop. But nothing seems quite right. What to do?
I watch too many shows about murders and forensics. NCIS, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, CSI, Body of Evidence and so many more. I’ve seen an awful lot of people convicted on blood evidence. I know how incriminating traces of a victim’s blood can make someone look.
This evening, while making dinner, I nicked myself with a paring knife. This isn’t an unusual event. I am not nearly careful enough in the kitchen. I have a bad habit of slicing off the tips of fingers, stabbing myself, then bleeding all over the place. I used to joke that the blood of the cook was mixed in the food, but it wasn’t entirely untrue. My son and my husband both have been known to pull knives out of my hands and chop the veggies themselves because watching me using a knife made them unbearably nervous.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t bleed so much, but I do. This is ironic indeed because when I go for tests at the hospital, they can never find a vein or get any blood out of me. I have suggested I just bring a paring knives, slice open a finger and they can have more blood than they’ll know what to do with, but for some reason, they don’t find this suggestion nearly as funny as I do.
Anyway, I nicked myself cutting up the chicken sausages. It wasn’t a bad cut as these things go and if I hadn’t been in the middle of preparing dinner while simultaneously fighting with the cable company on the telephone, I might have put a band-aid onto my finger faster. Then there wouldn’t have been drops of my blood all over the kitchen. It wasn’t a gusher. Merely a dribbler. Drip. Drip. Drip. Damn, not on my sweater. Blood is so hard to get out of clothing.
After I finally got the food going. I put the knife down, ended the phone call, still snarling at Charter Cable. I really hate those bastards. I made my way to the cupboard, managed to get the blood flow stopped. That was the moment when I realized my blood is all over the kitchen.
It’s from this little nick and all the other cuts, nicks and stabs when I was slicing, dicing, mincing or paring. CSI would have a field day in our kitchen.
If anything ever happens to me and my poor guiltless husband is accused of a crime, they’ll find my blood everywhere. The poor dear will look guilty as hell and all he’s ever done is try to protect me from myself. This is probably the right time point out many of my self stabbings take place while fighting an endless battles with shrink-wrap and other torturous types of packaging. Have you ever tried to get a couple of blister-packed pills out of their containers in the middle of the night? It said “press here” and you do, but all it does is stretch, the urgently needed medication still out of reach.
I have found myself using hemostats (I use them for stringing dolls; I am not a doctor for living people, only plastic ones) to pull cotton out of pill bottles, stabbing blister packs with tweezers (the only pointy things in my bathroom), using a steak knife to cut the plastic seals on a spray bottle, attacking packing tape with a hunting knife. I have two knives — a 4″ folding knife with a turquoise handle and a 5″ sheath knife with a deer antler handle. Nobody has taken them away from me yet, but that’s possibly because I hide them.
I cut myself regularly, but I also damage the contents of packages in my frenzied attempt to actually extract whatever is in there with any tools I have at hand. My favorite tool is a box cutter which I have used for things like prying the back off my Blackberry to get at the battery. It isn’t supposed to require special tools, but my Blackberry Torch was hermetically sealed against owner interference. Unfortunately, taking the back off and removing the battery is the only way to reboot the phone. I gave up and got an iPhone, not because I like the iPhone better. I don’t. I just couldn’t battle my way into the battery compartment one more time.
I do not set out to do myself injury, but in the contest of me against packaging, packaging is clearly winning.
Thus you can find traces of my blood everywhere I’ve ever opened a package and everywhere in my kitchen. You’ll find blood evidence on my computer keys, my mouse, my knives, tweezers and especially my beloved box cutter. I hide my box cutter, always afraid someone will take it from me in a pointless (sorry about the pun) attempt to save me from myself.
If CSI comes here, just show them this post. Maybe they won’t send anyone up for life on my behalf.
Shortly before Christmas, Garry and I went somewhere — probably a doctor — and I forgot my cell phone. So I asked Garry if I might use his. I was appalled when I could barely hear anything, even with the volume full up and using the speaker. I realized that if I could barely hear it, he couldn’t hear at all. This brought me to the inevitable conclusion that Garry needed a new cell phone.
Good wife that I am, I figured I’d get him a new phone with better sound so he would not be stuck trying to hear on a phone with such awful sound quality.
It was the middle of December and although I realized it was a bit close to Christmas, it was more than 10 days away and how long could it possible take to get a new cell phone, right?
I went online at AT&T, our long-time carrier and checked to see if he or I was entitled to an upgrade. It turned out that both of us were entitled to upgrades, but my phone is just about a year old, I don’t use it very much and although I’m entitled to a new phone, I don’t need one. Garry, on the other hand …
This seems a fairly straightforward process. I checked to see what phones are available on super special, discovered he could get an updated version of the phone he already has for $29.99, with the usual 2 year committment, but we’ve been with AT&T forever anyhow and I don’t see that any of the other carriers are better … so why not? It was the middle of the night, but I called AT&T and was going to order the new version of the Blackberry Curve … but they wanted a credit card and I was already in bed, so I said I’d call tomorrow. I was too tired to get up and deal with it then and there.
When I tried to access the website the next day, I couldn’t. Eventually, I called and discovered it wasn’t me, wasn’t a bad password or my computer. AT&T’s servers were being upgraded. I should have guessed. I should have sensed the crackling of crisis in the air.
When I started to place the order, AT&T assured me that they needed to charge me $36 for the upgrade fee. “What upgrade?” I asked. “We already have all the services we need. The only upgrade service you are going to do is put the phone in a box and mail it to us. You said it’s free shipping … but $36 is one shockingly high shipping charge because if you aren’t providing any other services, that’s the only thing it could be.”
The young lady to whom I was talking said she couldn’t do anything about it, she was not responsible and everyone had to pay the fee. I said that I was not going to pay the fee and frankly, we’ve been long-term customers and this was shabby treatment indeed. I next learned that I was going to have to pay sales tax on the full list price of the phone, even though we all know that NO ONE pays full retail on anything, much less a cell phone upgrade. Thus this $29.99 had spiraled into around $100 …. which is more than our ultra tight budget could possible manage.
I said I wanted to talk to a supervisor. I was transferred and eventually, disconnected. Called back, went through the whole story again, was told, again, that she couldn’t help me, said she was transferring me to a department that could help me. When I got to that department, I was told it was the wrong department and I was going to have to go back and talk to the original people who had now two? three? times told me they couldn’t help me. I would have been laughing but time was passing. I had started this on Sunday night and it was Tuesday. Christmas was now a week hence and I had yet to actually place an order.
I don’t remember all the people I talked to, all the supervisors to whom I was transferred, all the deals I made only to find that the next person I spoke to had never heard anything about it. It has mercifully become a blur. My husband was cranky because he felt since he hadn’t actually asked for a phone, I had no reason to expect a lot of sympathy or support. I could have pointed out he did need a phone and just being his wife ought to entitle me to sympathy and support … but that would just cause more acrimony. It had indeed been my idea to get a new phone based purely the uselessness of his old one. But that’s pure sentiment. I should have waited until he actually asked me for a phone, preferably begged. Generosity. That was my first mistake.
As the tale continued, it became the story with no end. So many departments, so many disconnects. I ran down the battery on my cell phone and on the handset of my house phone, then switched to the other handset And still, no order. Finally, it was Friday, December 21st and AT&T agreed to waive the charge, give me back a few bucks to compensate for the insane sales tax, and include free shipping. By now, I’d changed from the Blackberry Curve to the iPhone 4 which was on clearance for $0.99 and they swore up and down the east coast I’d have the telephone in my hands on Christmas Eve. Shortly after this amazing promise, I got another call from someone who said whoever promised me Christmas Eve delivery should not have made such a rash promise because who knew if I’d really get the phone? Could be … weeks? Never?
We had been planning to be away from the day after Christmas through next weekend … so if they delivered the phone during that period, it would sit outside in the ice, snow and slush until we got home. But not to worry, she said. If that happened, I could “just send it back.”
I could not cope with the idea of returning the phone. This was bad enough going through this one. Twice would be unbearable. I had been on the telephone with AT&T for more hours in one week than I had been on the phone with everyone else I know during the entire previous year. Granted I’m not on the phone much, but this had eaten at least 25 hours of telephone time … and there seemed to be no end in sight. Ever.
Somewhere during this period, our plans for visiting friends post-Christmas were cancelled because my friend is ill … and despite assurances that there was no wayI’d get the phone by Christmas Eve followed by equally passionate assurances I definitely wouldget the phone by Christmas Eve, I simply had no idea when or if I was getting a phone. Would you like to take a guess?
I got the phone Christmas Eve. A little white box in a bigger brown box via FedEx. No bubble pack. Just the phone banging around inside the shipping box. So I waited until the day after Christmas and called about the lack of padding in the box because I didn’t want to wind up with a dead iPhone 4 being told it was somehow my fault. I was assured by someone somewhere that this wouldn’t happen, so I went ahead opened the box and tried setting up the phone.
Nothing went the way it was supposed to go. What is more, due to the endless legal battles between Google and Apple, Garry’s gmail contact list could not be synchronized with the iPhone.
The first tech support individual, from AT&T, told me that Garry would have to enter all the information by hand. I said “up your nose with a rubber hose” or words to that effect. Garry’s address book has at least 300 entries and I think I’m being conservative. I pointed out that the iPhone is supposed to sync with Outlook and by now, a few disconnects later, I was on the phone with Apple tech support and my cell phone was recharging, the battery having run down to zero again and I was on the second of the two “house phone” handsets, having run through the first phone’s battery. We finally doped out, between him and me, that we had to delete the “cloud” function and NOT synchronize the two email addresses linked to Outlook because for some reason it created a conflict and would immediately spew error messages.
After finally getting the iPhone to synchronize with Outlook’s address book, the iPhone started demanding a password for voicemail.
Except that neither Garry nor I has ever needed a password for our voice mail. Not his, not mine, not ever. So we didn’t have any passwords to give them. When the Apple tech guy said I’d have to call AT&T to get it sorted out, I went into full meltdown. I could not face another long wait, multiple disconnects … and trying to interface with a who knew how many morons before maybe … by New Year‘s … I could get through to someone who would know what the problem was and fix it.
Finally, the fellow at Apple who actually seemed to have at least a pretty good knowledge of the product which, when added to my logical deductions, managed to get the address book issue dealt with … said he himself would call AT&T and put us in a conference call and we’d sort the whole thing out. He said he’d call me back and I begged … I think groveling might better describe it … that he really call me back and not leave me hanging.
That this was the day after Christmas, probably the busiest day of the year for tech support what with everyone getting a telephone, tablet, computer, or some other electronic widget under the tree, probably didn’t help. But he called back with a man who was clearly not an entry-level tech support guy. This one was a Big Gun. You just knew it. He fixed it. He said it was a software artifact from older phones and he was going to delete it from the system and it would never trouble me again.
Then he gave me a $40 credit giving me a small profit on the transaction unless you count my time as being worth money in which case I’m far behind. Far, very far behind.
Garry has a new cell phone. He said “thank you,” and I said “you’re welcome,” but personally, I think I’ve earned a medal at the very least.
So for all the people who told me to “Get a Mac” to solve my problems, I will agree the iPhone is a fine, well-made phone. Was it easy to set up? No. Did it have fewer glitches than my other phones? No. If anything, it had more issues. I got it for a great price and it has, as I had hoped, very loud speakers so Garry can hear it. Hopefully, he’ll get used to the virtual keyboard.
I hate them and I also hate the little raised keys on the blackberry. In fact, I never voluntarily write anything on my cell phone and why he does rather than use the computer he is sitting next to I have no idea.
This whole trial by fire has made me aware of how pathetic my older Blackberry Torch (first generation) is and how I probably do need a new phone. Maybe sometime next year I’ll have recovered enough from this grueling marathon to think about replacing it. But not yet. I need to rest and ponder a while, at least until the story gets much funnier. Maybe after I can laugh about it, I’ll try to buy a phone for me, too.
This was basically a good day. Really. Gar and I went to a real party and saw people we almost never see. We didn’t stay long because both of us have trouble with loud parties, but it was a lovely home, good company. Pleasant and full of happy noises.
We got home with only one missed turn off and managed to correct it, even though our GPS, “Richard,” seemed to feel we could make a u-turn on the Southeast Expressway, also known as Route 93 … an elevated limited access high-speed road with perhaps the heaviest traffic in the region. At rush hour, no less. So instead of our GPS, we were forced to rely on a blind luck to find a route that would let us reverse our direction and get back onto the Expressway in the opposite (correct) direction.
If we hadn’t been just outside of Quincy, it would have been easier … probably. Massachusetts was one of the earliest settled parts of the U.S. and our roads are a mess. If you look on a map, they look like a bowl of spaghetti.
We have wrong way concurrence of road, incredibly complicated intersections, signs that don’t make any sense … and no signs where you desperately need them. For you foreigners (anyone not from around here), the town is actually pronounced Quinzy, leaving me with the eternally unanswered question: Was our sixth president called John Quincy Adams, or John Quinzy Adams.
The roads in and around Quincy are totally illogical. To go south, you have to first go north, but not necessarily vice versa. The signs, although better than they used to be, can’t entirely clarify. Getting on and off of route 295 heading south on route 146 requires keeping right, then left, then right in rapid succession, and when coming back the other way, a high-speed dash across 5 lanes of rapidly moving traffic and the signage doesn’t begin to explain that you have to gun it and keep going, no matter how many cars and trucks are heading at you. If you are driving in a vehicle that doesn’t accelerate quickly, prayer is recommended.
And that is approximately where we missed a turn off. With our GPS shouting at us to turn around, then losing track of us completely. At one point, we were apparently in the middle of the bay, at least according to Richard. It’s wasn’t as bad as downtown Boston — few things are — but it’s bad.
We eventually managed to circle around, though we had to go a few miles.
We got home and discovered that Nan, our innocent, sweet lamb of a Norwich Terrier had chewed a very neat but sizable hole in the previously unopened 20 pound bag of dog food. It’s hard to tell how much she ate, but for a dog that is about 11 inches at the shoulder, she is astonishingly food-driven. Her need for food is hard explain unless you’ve seen it because she is such a little sweetheart … and willing to battle a mastiff to get to the food dish first.
After dealing with the dog food, I decided to take care of what I assumed would be a simple task: getting a new cell phone for my husband. His phone has gotten old. It’s just a couple of years old, but in cell phone years, that’s practically ancient. I can barely hear on it and I have normal hearing, so he probably can’t hear anything. It’s just old.
But AT&T says that Garry is entitled to an upgrade and they have the new version of his Blackberry Curve at the upgrade price of $29.99. So I logged myself in … it took three tries, even though it was unquestionably the correct password … and when I went to do the upgrade, I discovered they were going to charge me $36 dollars for “upgrade services” plus $18.69 sales tax. The phone is $29.99 … which would make the tax significantly more than 50% of the price of the phone. The “upgrade service fee” is more than the phone.
Both of us already have Blackberries. We are adding no new services. We are changing nothing. So the “services” consist of mailing us the phone, whereupon we insert the chip, the battery, charge it, configure it and all that jazz.
I have stuck with AT&T for years, not because they have the best signal — not even close — or the best prices, but because they’ve always had great service. I was seriously pissed off. Eventually, I talked to a supervisor who agreed that perhaps the $36.00 fee was a bit much, but the sales tax is based on the full retail list price of the phone … a price nobody ever pays. And oh, the systems at AT&T are down, so they couldn’t take care of it right now. By then, I’d been dumped out of my account and in trying to get back, was informed that I’d tried to get into the account too many times and was now locked out. Not that it made much of a difference anyhow since the system had stopped recognizing my password yesterday and only intermittently recognized the new one.
They said they’d call me tomorrow. I said I was going to be at the hospital all day tomorrow seeing the neurologist who I hope can do something about my back, or at least make some of the pain go away. I’d happily settle for less pain.
Of the 450 minutes we pay for (and they no longer offer that plan … you have to buy at least 500), last month we used, between the two of us, 17 minutes. Of my 200 MB data, I used 9 MB. Of his 200, Garry used 12. We don’t need more features. What we need are telephones with decent sound that can be used to make telephone calls. We aren’t going to play with apps. We just need telephones for emergencies. There doesn’t seem to be a plan for people like us.
I started to wonder if we really need Blackberries at all, but there are practically no phones you can get that aren’t smart phones that have even passable sound quality. We both have laptops and desktops on which we get email. I also have a netbook and Kindle … both of which get email. How many ways do we need to get email? We take everything with us everywhere we go out-of-town. If there was a decent telephone that isn’t a smart phone available, we could save $60 a month. But any phone with good sound quality is a smart phone and requires a data plan which we don’t need or want. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Again.
Finally, I settled down, baked a frozen pizza and watched some television. I’m mentally preparing to find out if my spine is salvageable. I have a feeling that sleep is not going to come easily tonight.
I think I need to chill. Between dealing with my new HMO (that’s a whole other story) and AT&T, and the dreaded cable company … how did I ever find time to work a full-time job? I’m way too busy to work.
My husband and I have Blackberry Smartphones. These days, I have the Torch (it was on sale), but Garry still has the Curve. He uses it for email, to track appointments, and to make phone calls. The reason we both wound up with Blackberries and not iPhones was simple: iPhones have pathetic voice quality for making phone calls. So do most smartphones. Blackberry is the only one that seems to care whether or not you can actually hear the voice on the other end.
No one, apparently, makes phone calls anymore, so phone manufacturers aren’t interested in telephone voice quality. Everyone is obsessed by apps. They want to know what apps they can use. They text, play games, take pictures …. but they don’t use the phone as a phone.
In this household, the only thing for which we use our telephones is to communicate and keep our schedules. That’s it. I lack the pointy little thumbs that make texting convenient for younger people. It’s a genetic adaptation I don’t have. My thumbs do thumb-centric things like grasping tools: they are not good for typing except touch typing where they are fine for whacking at the space bar.
Why would I want to do all that stuff on my phone when I have a desktop, a big laptop, a net book, and a tablet? If I want to take pictures, I have two Olympus PEN camera bodies plus 4 high-quality lenses, as well as a small superzoom point & shoot Canon that I keep as backup in my purse. My telephone is good for three things: making and receiving phone calls, synchronizing with Outlook‘s calendar (so Garry and I know who’s going to which doctor and when) and email. He uses it for email a lot more than I do. I prefer a full-size keyboard.
I use a camera for taking pictures and a computer for most everything else. I know that my Torch has a ton of capabilities I never use and I don’t care. I don’t want to use them. Twice I have used my phone to take a picture because it was the only thing available. Otherwise, I like cameras for photography, computers for computing, GPS units for navigation, and telephones for talking to people on ….tada … the telephone.
Unless you are on the road all the time without access to WIFI, what possible advantage do you get by running your world from this tiny device? Why do you even want to? Is it the only mobile device available to you? You mean you don’t have a laptop, netbook, or tablet?
I genuinely don’t understand why anyone feels a pressing need to use a small inconvenient device to do things that are so much easier to do on a bigger device … which they probably already own.
How well do I understand my phone? Enough to do what I need to do. It has good audio for telephone calls! It’s a telephone, you know?
One day, people will discover that they are doing everything the hard way. This is likely to occur when the younger generation starts to hit their late 30s and 40s and discovers they can’t see tiny little objects without special glasses. It happens to everyone and nothing you do will prevent it.
At that point, like a thunderbolt from Zeus himself, an entire generation will realize that it’s a whole lot easier to type on a keyboard, edit graphics and format text on a monitor large enough to see more than a few words at a time and bright enough to tell whether or not the photograph is in focus (what a concept!). They will be shocked by the discovery, thrilled to realize they no longer need to squint at a tiny screen when they could see the whole thing on a big bright high-definition monitor! It will be an international epiphany of epic proportions!
Not only that, but maybe people will remember how nice it is to hear the voice of a loved one, not just see a text or email. We might even rediscover (be still my heart) intimacy. You never know. Human relationships may come back into fashion!
You could call me old-fashioned, but I’m not. I’m also not stupid, out of touch, nor a technophobe. I love technology. If I had more money, I’d have even more computers than I do and arguably, I already have too many.
It’s just that I think we’ve lost track of why we have telephones.
I have 3 personal computers: a desktop with a big HD monitor, a 15″ laptop more powerful than my desktop, and a notebook mini that I use in the bedroom and lives on my night table. I also have 2 Kindles, including the new Fire which is a media center, though some consider it a computer (I don’t). For mobile communications, I have a Blackberry Torch .
Blackberry Torch
It’s very good at 3 things — all of which scream “communications” to me: Email, telephone calls, and maintaining a shared calendar with my husband so we don’t double schedule stuff. It would text just fine, but as it happens, I hate texting. My 10-inch notebook has as small a keyboard as I’m willing to use for typing anything beyond a couple of words. I type with 10 fingers. My thumb, opposable and all, is excellent for picking things up and holding a pen, even for playing the piano. They are not designed for typing. That must be a genetic adaptation that occurred in the last 30 years. My thumbs are not pointy or fast-moving. They are thumbs that perform thumb-appropriate tasks.
In a never-ending attempt to make a single device that can do everything, mobile phones now do just about everything except make quality phone calls. Most of them have terrible audio quality on the phone. They may have decent reproduction for music and games, but you can’t hear a voice on the other end of a call. Crackle, white noise and low amplitude makes real phone calls torture. My husband and I each bought a Blackberry because we wanted to be able to make phone calls and hear each other and sometime, other people, on the telephone. Shocking concept? Are you appalled that we use our phones primarily as portable communications devices?
iPhone 5
While we were in the phone store, we tried out all the different phones including the iPhone and the only one that had good quality voice reproduction on telephone calls was Blackberry. The others are all trying to be a cross between an MP player, mini computer, and game boy. The voice quality on phone calls was awful, but apparently no one actually uses that function anymore.
I have computers to compute. I have an MP player and I have the Kindle Fire for media. I use my telephone for communication. Oh, and I carry a small, good quality camera for taking pictures on the fly.
I strongly believe and no one has ever shown me any good reason to change my mind that anything that is trying to do everything isn’t doing anything really well … or it’s doing one thing well and twenty other things badly.
My son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter have telephones that are now close to half the size of my Kindle. Soon, they will be as big or bigger. Does anyone remember how we all wanted smaller phones so we didn’t have to carry a great big “thing” with us?
For a while, they got a little too small for my taste, but then they got back to a size that is definitely telephony.
Dell XPS 15
Now, with each added function they put on the phone, the more apps, widgets, peripherals, gadgets, functions, styli, wires, earphones, docks and doodads you need to do accomplish these different things on what originated as a telephone, the less I want to do with them. It’s not that I don’t understand them. I understand just fine
I don’t LIKE them.
Honk if you think a phone should be first and foremost, a device that is very good for making and receiving telephone calls!
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
